There are other options in the game that don’t effect gameplay in the same way.

You can choose to purchase trading card in game novelty items – or not.

You can choose to buy ingame pets – or not.

You can choose to buy a 310% speed mount – or not.

You can choose to pay $2.99 per month to additional features of the remote auction house – or not.

These are all options and while the mount and the AH feature DO impact on the game, do give an advantage for people with real world $$ to spend out of game, neither require relinquishing personal liberties or privacy.

The now revoked changes to the forums gave an option:

Use them with your REAL name (because although you could fake your account name, that is against the ToS, so no law abiding person would do that… Right?), or not.

To me this is either:

Not a (good) option, or

Not enough options.

Options, Options, Options.

At the root is the lack of options of RealID itself, whatever is built on top of this needs to have its options at this level.

Let’s step through the privacy options as I see could work.

1a) Don’t use AnID features
1b) Do use AnID features

If using AnID:

2a) Use AnID features with RealName
2b) Use AnID features with AliasName

3a) Allow FriendsOfFriends
3b) Don’t allow FriendsOfFriends

If using FriendsOfFriends:

4a) Use FriendsOfFriends features with RealName
4b) Use FriendsOfFriends features with AliasName

When using AnID:
5a) Choose to appear offline at login
5b) Choose to appear online at login
5c) Choose to appear online/offline at any point of your choice to your (groups of) friends.

With respect to characters:
Choose which characters participate in AnID, so you can maintain your getaway zone, the place just for you.

FriendlyGroups

Privacy settings should be controlled via groups. You may have your:

Family group – your choice to be always online

Guild group

People I’ve met group

Roleplaying group

Nasty nasty PvP group

etc

I know it can be complicated, but I believe it should be optional to make it as complicated as YOU wish.

It should be optional to turn on, not off

By this I mean that when a new feature is introduced that uses AnID, it should be optional to use AnID, whether RealName or AliasName.

It should be optional to relax privacy, rather than increase it.

By this I mean that when you first activate AnID, and when you first accept a friend request they should automatically be in the tightest privacy group, which you can choose to reduce for as long as you feel comfortable.

It should be optional for a feature in the first place.

None of the “you can’t have this wonderful, exciting, maybe game changing feature” unless you revoke your rights to privacy.

Yes you can use it, but you have the choice of whether you use it as Gnomeaggedon, Snowy, or Bob Rhubarb.

Parental Options <> Privacy Settings

I know I have splattered this around in comments, including a comment to my own post, but Parental Options are NOT Privacy Settings – They are CENSORSHIP settings.

They are settings that you as a parent choose to censor the big bad Internet from your young impressionable charges.

It’s incoming censorship.

I want outgoing censorship, where I can choose what other people see of me.

Just because I don’t want other people to know my RL identity, doesn’t mean I want to have a profanity filter imposed on me, channels of communication restricted to me, Beta participation removed from me.

By using parental controls as privacy controls important parts of the game are made… Optional?

Needless to say I still feel very strongly about this and as things stand, where AnID is still my Real(How stupid and I to follow the ToS and use my real-real legal name)ID, then I figure if I have to use my RealID, I am left with only two options.

The Sparkle Pony (and the Rocket Mount) are not 310% speed mounts. I’m unaware of one that you can purchase through the TCG either. They will serve as 310% speed mounts if you’ve obtained an appropriate speed mount in game. No different than druid flight form scaling to 310% if you have a Rusted Proto Drake, ICC mount, Arena Mount, Long Strange Trip, etc.

I won’t argue about the remote AH, simply because I don’t AH enough to comment if it provides an advantage or not (I suppose you could argue that it does, though without the addons most AHers use I don’t see it being that amazing).

Regardless, the Sparkle Pony does not convey an in game advantage for money.

I put parental controls on myself to opt out of real id, but now that I found out I can’t get in to the beta because of it, I want to remove them. I logged in to the parental contols section on the site, but I couldn’t find a way to remoe them. Anyone have some advice for me?